


Baby It's Cold Outside

by holbytlanna



Series: Advent Calendar 2020 [1]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Bless Jack Dalton, Christmas Advent Calendar 2020, Gen, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Let Jack Dalton Say Fuck, Locked outside overnight, Platonic Cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:02:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27897244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holbytlanna/pseuds/holbytlanna
Summary: Hypothermia | Locked outside overnight | Cuddling for warmthWho doesn't love a good hypothermia fic with some shady symptoms and cuddles!
Relationships: Jack Dalton & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016)
Series: Advent Calendar 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2042773
Comments: 4
Kudos: 52





	Baby It's Cold Outside

**Author's Note:**

> As you may have guessed from my excursion into Whumptober this year, I can't keep to a schedule to save my life. So this is late. I'm definitely gonna do a fic for each segment of the Advent Calendar thingy, but I can't promise they'll be on time, what with work and finals and holidays :)
> 
> I know nothing about the region of the world I dropped our boys in, so if I've gotten anything glaringly wrong, feel free to shoot me a comment

NEAR KIRKENES, NORWAY

TEMPERATURE: VERY COLD

“Man, I told you, I told you a hundred times, we shouldn’t have taken a mission with the risk of literally freezin’ our butts off again. I mean, I’m still not entirely sure my own behind’s recovered, and now you’ve gone and tried becomin’ a snowman. It ain’t healthy, brother.”

Jack’s complaining filled the crappy rental car in a way that Mac only wished hot air would. Oh, sure, the heating element worked, and Mac had even tinkered around with it so it worked better. But he was still shaking with a bone-numbing cold.

And Jack’s complaining wasn’t really helping. “What part of our job would you call ‘healthy,’ Jack?” Mac tried to snap. It would have come out more bitter had it not been for his chattering teeth. 

Jack, taking his eyes off the snowy road long enough to glance at Mac, who was curled up in the passenger seat, took the bait. “Oh, you know, you could say we get some cardio in every now and then.”

Mac rolled his eyes.

He hadn’t exactly  _ tried _ to become a snowman, as Jack had put it. He had just slipped while the two of them were running for their car down a hill, away from some gun-toting BadGuys. A slip that sent him tumbling down the hill much faster than he had anticipated, and soaking him in snow. Now, even in the car, the February cold had Mac’s body trembling and mind slowing. Even though they had gotten him out of the snow in short order, he was still very much at risk for hypothermia.

And the best part was, if the heavy snowfall continued, they would miss their exfil.

No one was tailing them, though. That was good news. The road was empty, aside from the drifts of snow and their own little car. And their mission was over, they just needed to get out of the country before the Norwegians learned that they had ever been there.

Mac held his hands over the hot-air vent, willing them to stop their shaking. But suddenly, as Jack jounced the car over a pothole in the only semi-clear road, the hot air stopped. 

“What the...” Mac muttered as he fiddled with the controls. Nothing. No air came out, hot or cold. “Great. Heater’s busted, Jack.”

Jack looked over, taking in his partner’s still-shivering body. “Okay, well I guess I’ll just gun it faster. We’ve gotta get you warmed up pretty soon, and that won’t happen in here, now.” And true to his word, Jack pressed just a bit harder on the gas.

As much as Mac agreed with the idea of getting warmed up on the exfil flight home, driving in the snow was never a very fun experience. Mac trusted Jack’s driving, but he didn’t trust the weather. Accelerating made this even more unsafe. One wrong turn and they could spin out, or crash. 

Later, the two of them would argue whether or not they were actually lucky. They didn’t crash, despite the conditions and high speed. They made it out alive. But they didn’t make their exfil.

Just like the way the heating had sputtered out, so did the car, about ten minutes later. Mac was sorely feeling the loss of the heating unit, shaking violently as his body futilely attempted to warm itself. Thinking felt like wading through jello, and he was tired to the bone. He woke out of a dazed half-sleep to the sound of Jack cursing loudly.

“What happened?” he asked quietly. His voice slurred just a little, and he cleared his throat trying to control it.

“I don’t know, man! It just up and stopped on me! Piece of trash…” Jack was gearing up for a rant, probably about the parentage of the manufacturers or something equally pointless, and it was a rant Mac didn’t want to listen to. He opened the car door with trembling hands.

“Whoa, hey now, Mac! Where d’you think you’re goin’?” Jack interrupted himself, catching Mac by his sleeve. 

The open door let in icy air that made Mac instantly regret every life decision leading up to that point. But he had opened it with a purpose in mind.  _ What was it…? _ “I’m… I’ve gotta see what’s wrong. Fix it. So we can get to exfil.” 

Jack looked at Mac like he’d grown another head. “You’re already pretty close to hypothermic, too damn close. Close that door, sit your frozen ass down and I’ll check out this hunk of junk.” Jack opened his own door and marched around to the hood of the car, his reaction to the temperature thankfully muffled by the layers of glass and steel separating the two of them. 

But in Mac’s cold-muddled mind, he needed to be out there with Jack, he needed to help him. He knew Jack knew his way around cars, Jack probably didn’t need his help, but maybe an extra pair of eyes and hands — shaky hands, so maybe just the eyes — would get them moving faster. So he opened his door again and stepped out into the below-freezing Norwegian night air.

—————

Jack had already popped the hood and was trying to see what had caused the piece-of-shit rental car to stop running on them when he heard Mac’s door open and close again, and footsteps crunching on snow. 

“Thought I told you to stay in there. I’ve got this, hoss.” He looked up at Mac. The younger man looked absolutely miserable, shivering up a storm and obviously not really all-present-and-accounted-for. Those usually lively blue eyes were looking pretty spacey. “You get back in where it’s at least not snowing on ya.” 

Mac mumbled something about wanting to help, which Jack barely caught over the wind and Mac’s chattering teeth. Jack walked over to him and put an arm over his shoulder. “Hoss, if you were firing on all cylinders, I’d gladly let you be the one to freeze your ass off out here fixing the car ‘stead of me. But you ain’t. You need to get back in before you freeze.” 

Jack opened Mac’s door for him. Or tried to. “Whatcha lock your door for, punk?” he said, with no heat behind his words (there was no heat at all in this situation). 

Mac frowned. “Didn’ mean to…” he said quietly, taking the handle in his own hand and pulling. Nothing. Either it had locked, or it was frozen shut. 

Jack trudged through snow to the driver’s side door, but found that it was locked too. And so were both the passenger doors.

“Fuck!” he cried out, kicking a snow-chained tire. Somehow, he had managed to lock them both out of their only shelter. They were maybe an hour’s walk from their exfil, more with the snow and Mac’s quickly deteriorating condition. They couldn’t make it on time, even if Jack carried him. 

Mac was sitting down in the snow now, looking even more spaced-out. Jack could tell that Mac wouldn’t be a whole lot of help in their situation. It was up to him. 

So, he went over their options. 1- trek to exfil. Bad idea. 2- break a window, climb in the car. Also not a great idea. Broken glass in addition to every other problem they had wouldn’t be fun. The heating didn’t work in there anyway, it wasn’t like it would be a whole lot better than outside

Which brought Jack to idea 3- bunker down. That was something he could do. They’d both had extensive survival training and experience. But there was no way this wasn’t gonna suck.

Jack shimmied under the car, making some strange sort of snow angel to clear the snow away. “Can't believe I locked us out of the damn car,” he grumbled bitterly. He knew very well that if Mac froze out here, it would be entirely his fault.

Once the space beneath the car was clearer, Jack wriggled out. Mac was looking at him funny.

“What’re you doing?” Big, fluffy snowflakes had amassed on Mac’s hair, and they lingered too long on his cheeks and nose before they melted.

Jack huffed a laugh. “Preparing our chambers, my liege,” he said with a dramatic bow that dislodged snow from his jacket onto the ground with a soft plopping sound. “C’mere, let’s get you under here and out of the snow.” 

Getting a semi-lucid Mac under a car was an exercise in patience. But they managed, somehow. They were under the car, out of the snow. Step one, accomplished. 

Step two, bunker down. 

“Alright, c’mere then, hoss.” Jack maneuvered himself and Mac so that he had Mac clutched against his chest. Mac’s face was pressed against Jack’s neck, so he almost missed the murmured “what’s this for?”

“To keep the pair of us from freezing to death,” Jack said, grabbing Mac’s hands and positioning them between their two bodies. It wouldn’t do to lose fingers to frostbite, especially Mac’s. Jack would never say that Mac wouldn’t be Mac without his hands; he was so much more than just clever fingers, he had a brain and a heart and a soul, all as pure  _ good _ as the day was long. But everything the kid loved to do, he did with his hands. Jack wouldn’t forgive himself if his negligence cost Mac that.

It could already very well have cost him his life. 

They would have to wait probably at least overnight for a rescue. They weren’t even supposed to have made exfil yet. The chances of surviving the frigid night, even with their meagre shelter and shared body heat, were not high. Especially Mac’s.

“I’m sorry, kiddo,” Jack murmured into Mac’s hair. Mac was shivering against him, and Jack rubbed a gloved hand up and down his back. “‘m sorry I got us into this mess.”

Mac just hummed against his shoulder, where his head was pressed, too out of it to really take in Jack’s words.

They fell asleep that way. Jack prayed not to wake up if Mac didn’t.

—————

Boots crunching on snow was the sound that filtered into Jack’s consciousness. He could hear, but he didn’t want to open his eyes. He didn’t even know if he would be able to. So he settled for just what he could hear, and feel. Boots. Voices. Cold.  _ So _ cold. Hair tickling his face. A cold, still body in his arms. 

_ Mac. _

That was the spur Jack needed to open his eyes. He saw blond hair by his face, dark car underbelly, and blinding sun on snow. And boots. TAC boots. 

“The car’s here, ma’am. MacGyver and Dalton aren’t inside though. There aren’t footprints leading away, but they could have been snowed over.”

Jack tried to say something, but nothing came out.  _ Come on, come on, Mac needs help, you’ve gotta tell them where you are! _

He got out a croak that was closer to a whimper than Jack would have liked to admit. He was tired, he was frozen, he was aching. But they heard him.

“My God. They’re under the car, Director Webber! We’ve got them.” One of the men was speaking into a comm earpiece. He was the one who pulled Jack out by his boot, dragging Mac with him. 

“Help him,” he said, as soon as he was sure he’d be understood. The TAC guys gently lifted each of them and got them into the waiting van to take them to the plane to take them home.

Warming blankets were thrown over each of them, but Jack barely noticed. Mac hadn’t so much as stirred at all since Jack had woken. The TAC guys (Jack would get their names later) had taken a pulse, and sent it back to Matty. Mac was alive, dangerously unresponsive. There were heavy duty med supplies on the plane, so their main focus was booking it there.

Jack took in Mac’s still body and blueish lips. His slack face and ghostly pallor and limply curled hands. He ran a trembling hand through snow-melt wet hair, willing Mac to pull through.  _ He always pulls through. _

A plane ride, two warming blankets (Jack had given Mac his, stubbornly insisting that he needed it more), and some heated saline later, Mac was in medical in sunny SoCal, just beginning to wake up. 

He didn’t really remember a whole lot after the car broke down. Hypothermia had muddled his mind up. But he remembered Jack. Jack had been warm, holding him. 

And now, as he started to wake up, he felt warm and safe, and it caused him to immediately look for Jack. Why else would he be feeling safe if his Overwatch wasn’t with him? 

He didn’t have to look far. Jack was sitting in his hospital chair. The one he claimed was less uncomfortable than all the rest, the one Phoenix med learned long ago to keep by MacGyver’s bedside. Jack smiled down at Mac, running a thumb along the back of his hand softly.

The overwhelming safe-and-warm feeling that Mac was basking in pulled him back down to sleep before he and Jack could even say a word, but they didn’t need words. Jack had saved both their lives.


End file.
